Security researchers at ESET and Sophos have discovered that hackers have gone out of their way to port an old Linux backdoor Trojan to the Apple Mac OS X platform, extending their reach of computers that they can use as part of their botnets.

According to the researchers, the Trojan, named Tsunami, connects to an IRC channel and awaits commands from hackers. Those commands include instructions to flood a server with requests, which combined with the efforts of other compromised computers results in a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack.

It can also download files to the compromised machine, allowing it to update itself or install additional malware and has the ability to execute any command of the attacker's choosing, essentially giving them complete control.